/rant on
Everyone and their dog has Kiril in the meantime - except me! And Yor'sahj's staff dropped only once in all the many raid finder weeks and several normal-raid weeks I've done by now. I still run around with Ranseur of Hatred, argh!!
/rant off

Well. Our guild now kills Yor'sahj on hc, and I think I know the answer but I just wanted to reassure myself: The heroic version of the staff from Yor'sahj is better than the normal Kiril, right? Right??

Just making sure I'll spend my few dkp wisely

-Sibylle

"Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious." (Brendan Gill)

Yes it is. Kiril's proc doesn't make up for the higher weapon dps and the "normal" secondary stats of a higher iLvl Spire. So the order is simply H Kiril > H Spire > N Kiril > N Spire > LFR Kiril (there is no LFR Spire). And while it's fun to be the "big cat" with Kiril I'm happy that with Spire there's one source less of the "more powerful spell already present"-failure when trying to reapply Rip. If you end up sometime with a Kiril and a higher iLvl Spire you can start the fight with Kiril and as soon as the proc kicks in you swap to Spire - since this usually happens quite fast and the proc-buff stays on you even after swapping weapons this is a dps increase. Be sure though to have Kiril equipped already 50s+ pre pull because of the ICD of the proc.

amilee wrote:Yes it is. Kiril's proc doesn't make up for the higher weapon dps and the "normal" secondary stats of a higher iLvl Spire. So the order is simply H Kiril > H Spire > N Kiril > N Spire > LFR Kiril (there is no LFR Spire). And while it's fun to be the "big cat" with Kiril I'm happy that with Spire there's one source less of the "more powerful spell already present"-failure when trying to reapply Rip. If you end up sometime with a Kiril and a higher iLvl Spire you can start the fight with Kiril and as soon as the proc kicks in you swap to Spire - since this usually happens quite fast and the proc-buff stays on you even after swapping weapons this is a dps increase. Be sure though to have Kiril equipped already 50s+ pre pull because of the ICD of the proc.

While to my knowledge all of this information is correct, I would suggest you hold off on manuevers such as this (bolded text) until you get your paws underneath you a little more. While things can certainly can go wrong, and therefore will go wrong if our old friend Murphy has anything to say about it, there is actually another reason for potentially passing on this strategy.

Generally speaking feral cats are not a GCD-capped spec, which is both a blessing and a curse. The upsides to this include such luxuries as the ability to rez in combat, rebuff team members, innervate, CC, or even swap weapons while suffering virtually nonexistent losses in damage. The downside centers on a smaller tolerance for error compared to other specs; Since we use abilities less often, we have to make them count that much more when we do. The beginning of an encounter emphasizes this tremendously, as you have no SR up, no Rake up, no Mangle up, no Rip or FF up, with precisely zero combo points at your disposal to remedy the situation. Globals are most assuredly at a premium and likely to remain such until you find yourself a considerable ways through the first Berserk.

Having said that, at the end of the day a damage increase is a damage increase so long as the math is there to back it up and you're confident that your execution is accurate enough and consistent enough to keep the standard deviation reasonable. I would imagine that a plan such as this one would likely net you very small gains at the end of any 5+ minute fight when it works perfectly. Conversely, should the same strategy go awry you will almost certainly have spent the entire previous minute of the fight with a suboptimal weapon before you realize your error once Kiril starts to proc for a second cycle.

Honestly the damage lost from such an episode probably isn't so large as for anyone else to even notice until you mention your error personally. The more likely problem would be compounding your mistake into a bigger issue because you were trying to fix your weapons instead of keeping your head in the game. Let's just say Ultraxion's Fading Light comes to mind. Explaining why a combat rez had to be wasted on you 45 seconds into a fight is never enjoyable.

Take your time, learn as much as you can about the rudimentary aspects of kitty DPS before attempting to perform out-of-the-box tactics when you are progression raiding. If you want to toy with ideas like this just for grins in the raid finder or a BH pug I'd say knock yourself out.

Amilee, thanks for the advanced tip! It's good to know this is possible.

Paramount wrote:... I would suggest you hold off on manuevers such as this (bolded text) until you get your paws underneath you a little more.

I like this And it's so true, of course. While I still make stupid mistakes even under normal circumstances, it might be wise not to add more complications to the equation.

Generally speaking feral cats are not a GCD-capped spec, which is both a blessing and a curse. The upsides to this include such luxuries as the ability to rez in combat, rebuff team members, innervate, CC, or even swap weapons while suffering virtually nonexistent losses in damage. The downside centers on a smaller tolerance for error compared to other specs; Since we use abilities less often, we have to make them count that much more when we do.

So true, demonstrated by the fact that things like combat resses I'm asked to do sometimes get me to forget everything and fight without SR up for 20 seconds before I notice, d'oh.

On the plus side, I'm really learning and my damage is climbing steadily. I'm usually around position 4, sometimes 3, on my raid's meters now, up from 6th and last (only on Madness I'm still bad, I'll have to figure that one out). So yeah, I'm getting there which is why I'll keep the weapon-change strategy in mind

-Sibylle

"Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious." (Brendan Gill)

So because of the Internal proc you couldn't do this weapon swap several times in the the fight right? Just off the start like that? Because I upgraded my LFR Kiril to Normal Spire last night and was wondering if some kind of weapon dance would be a DPS increase.

Good to know I was also killing my procs on kiril doing the Firecat staff swap pre fight in order to look cool, now I know and will not do that either, although Firecat staff to Spire might not have the ICD issue since there is no proc in that case.

Morghan wrote:So because of the Internal proc you couldn't do this weapon swap several times in the the fight right? Just off the start like that? Because I upgraded my LFR Kiril to Normal Spire last night and was wondering if some kind of weapon dance would be a DPS increase.

Good to know I was also killing my procs on kiril doing the Firecat staff swap pre fight in order to look cool, now I know and will not do that either, although Firecat staff to Spire might not have the ICD issue since there is no proc in that case.

Correct about the weapon swap, once you re-equip Kiril the internal CD would reset so it would be around 55s (not sure if it's 55s could be wrong) for it to proc again.

I have some questions though regarding this. I've been doing this since I got my HC Spire and just wondering is there any fancy ways of doing this other than having both weapons on my bars?

There is a way that you can go into your equipment manager and save each set, one with spire and one with kiril's, and then macro them into something else. For example if you name the sets "Kiril" and "Spire" it would look something like

#showtooltip Rake
/equipset Spire
/cast Rake

assuming no modifiers or conditionals. I don't use any macros that combine more than one GCD though, so I'm personally not sure of any needs for cast sequence or the like.

I was playing around with Having Kiril's equipped through the initial pull with berserk/tol'vir, and then immediately swapping to HC spire once the buff fell off. I wasn't running my logs when I was doing it in LFR but it did seem like as long as the buff was up I was destroying things (75k burst anyone?). I was just using a simple weapon swap macro, nothing fancy.

2 HM deathwing kills, no Heroic Kirils yet, cant wait to use kirils full time again

Some numbers for anyone reading this thread. With gear that is ilvl 400, swapping to heroic Spire from normal Kirils measured around 150dps higher in Mew on the default 5 minute Patchwerk fight with full raid buffs.

Puna wrote:I didn't find I was missing too much considering non of my exp came from Spire, and I was reforging the hit off for more haste.

You don't have the same issue because you are using the heroic Rag neck and the vendor 397 ring, while I am using the vendor neck and the Morchok normal ring. The Morchok ring has expertise and the vendor neck has hit. Since you have the Rag neck, you will be able to use the 410 Morchok ring and still get below the hit/exp caps by using the heroic bracers off of Warmaster Blackhorn.

Since I don't have the Rag neck, I may have to swap to the vendor ring, and until I get bracers off of Warmaster, I will be wasting some stat points. The current gear has so much hit and expertise on it, that with Spire, I will have to swap out two of the items in my current gear set to not waste stat points, and the alternative gear is not as desirable (such as the normal bracers off of Warmaster and the vendor 397 ring).

Sorry, I have to say this.... I FINALLY GOT KIRIL TODAY!! Bye-bye, Ranseur of Hatred! I'm such a happy kitty!! After NINE weeks with my new raid Kiril finally dropped for the first time. And our feral tank (who has the RF version which I never got either) gallantly passed it up for meeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Big kitteh inc!!

P.S. Sorry for the over-use of exclamation marks in this post - I just don't feel like speaking with full stops right now!

-Sibylle

"Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious." (Brendan Gill)

adianar wrote:Lol.. Gratz then.. I'll go out on a limb and say you might be excited about it ...

Adi

Thanks! Just a tad bit excited! Lol.

First raid week with Kiril, my dps has gone up so much. On Blackhorn I got to over 92% of a ranking - I know that would be horribly bad for some of you but I have never been over 90% on anything, ever... I really feel like I'm getting my act together, and Kiril was the icing on the cake

-Sibylle

"Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious." (Brendan Gill)

Don't be so dismissive of 92% as feral, especially on Blackhorn of all fights. You see, the prolonged presence of multiple targets for the first half of the fight makes the ship a decent spot for a kitty to strut his A-game. You were without a doubt up against the top logs of some heavy hitters, in a specifically feral-niche fight, and considering your relative gear to theirs I'd say you held your own.